


Kith and Kin

by madame_faust



Series: Kith and Kin [1]
Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Kink Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-10
Updated: 2013-03-10
Packaged: 2017-12-04 21:55:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/715523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/pseuds/madame_faust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill for a prompt on the kink meme: "It seems odd that Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur are along for the ride when they're the only ones not at least distantly related to the line of Durin.</p>
<p>But they are -- through marriage. They're kinsmen to Fíli and Kíli's late father. So while it's perfectly true to say they're not of the line of Durin, they have a vested interest in the young princes."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kith and Kin

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing and am making no profit from this story. Read the original prompt and fill here: http://hobbit-kink.livejournal.com/5821.html?thread=12595645#t12595645
> 
> I can honestly say this is the saddest thing I've ever written. But the prompt fit my headcanon so beautifully, I couldn't not write it.

  
_He wasn’t meant to be there,_ it was a thought that ran through Bofur’s mind over and over since the news of a collapse in one of the lower tunnels traveled throughout the coal mine, hundreds of hands signing frantically to one another.  
  
 _Which level?_  
  
 _Which mine?_  
  
 _How many trapped?_  
  
 _Who was down there?_  
  
Víli was down there, Bofur knew. But he wasn’t meant to be. He clung to that thought like a lifeline because if Víli wasn’t meant to be in the collapsed tunnel, then surely he was not dead. It was less than three hours before he saw him descend into the darkness with a cheerful wave, the torchlight glinting off his golden hair and beard. Just that morning he’d waited for him as he tossed his son in the air and made him giggle before he kissed his wife goodbye - doubling back and planting another on Dís’s stomach, saying he’d better practice his additional farewell so he was used to it before the babe was born. She laughed and swatted him, told him to get on with his day, they’d be late. It was _just_ that morning.  
  
Víli almost always worked alongside his cousins. Today was an aberration, a fluke. Someone was injured or slept late or was visiting family, Bofur couldn’t remember why he’d been abruptly reassigned, but he’d not been in his usual place. It wasn’t meant to happen, so it _didn’t_ happen.  
  
Surely he’d emerge from the rubble, safe and sound, Bofur thought even as he volunteered to venture into the mineshaft once it was deemed safe enough for others to - the foreman used the word “retrieve,” but he obviously meant to say “save” - go down after them. He was a slight fellow, for a dwarf, had been since childhood, all knobbly knees and elbows, Víli was stout, he’d carry him on his back when they rambled through the hills, even though Bofur was technically older than him - two years, not that it made much difference. Thick as thieves, they’d been, before Bombur was old enough to knock about with them, the neighbors and the family would say their names in one breath, VíliandBofur.  
  
VíliandBofur frightened the goats trying to ride them like ponies, VíliandBofur made mischief with the new-hung laundry, VíliandBofur nearly drowned playing pirates in the creek - and who’d heard of pirates in the mountains, anyway?  
  
Why, VíliandBofur, of course. Hanging around where they oughtn’t, coming back to their mothers with wild stories they picked up in the market.  
  
Their mothers. Who were sisters, now dead. Bofur’s auntie married up in the world, as up as one could marry within the mining families of the Blue Mountains. Snagged herself a Longbeard, she did, last of Durin’s line in the area. Traditionally, women joined their men’s families in marriage, but it would be more accurate to say that they’d adopted Bofur’s uncle into their own clan, he’d not had much family and was happier in the hustle and bustle of their house, his wife, his sister-in-law, brother-in-law and his son, older than VíliandBofur, but always willing to keep an eye on them. VíliandBofur and Bifur. Not the same breath, but close enough.  
  
Víli had something of both his parents in him, he got his father’s good looks and work ethic and his mother’s hearty laugh and singing voice. Both gone on to the Halls of Waiting, his father fallen in battle and his mother dying with a smile on her face, sore sorry to leave her son, but eager to see her husband again.  
  
As they moved stone, with a care and precision that made the process seem agonizingly slow, a dark, toothed thing writhed in Bofur’s gut and made the bile rise in his throat. It was a feeling he’d thought he’d forgotten, having experienced it only a few times in his life. Cold, nameless dread. The same dread he felt when the ravens flew from the battlefield bearing black ribbons in their beaks that they dropped on his mother’s kitchen table like rags for washing up. One for his father. Later, one for his uncle.

The last time he felt this way, it was when a red ribbon was brought for Bifur, injured in a skirmish with orcs. Ironically, that gave him a thread of hope to cling onto. Bifur had lived, after all. Bifur came home to them. Couldn’t Víli come home? His father and his uncle were taken, but Bifur was spared. Weren’t they owed one more?  
  
If they were, it was not Víli’s life that would restore the balance of life and death in their clan. Instead, he tipped the scale once more toward death. Left a foul taste on his tongue, bitter burning like acid and salty like tears.  
  
When Bombur saw his brother, slump-shouldered, emerging from the mineshaft holding one end of a stretcher upon which laid a form wrapped in a bloodied sheet, he did not hide his tears. Wordlessly, the brothers embraced, after a fellow worker laid the body down beside them and turned away, letting them have their private grief.  
  
Once Bombur had breath enough to speak, he gulped and whispered in an unfamiliar rasping voice, “I can’t tell her. I can’t.”  
  
Bofur did not need to ask of whom his brother spoke. Their Dís, their lovely girl of the raven tresses who Víli fell in love with as soon as he laid eyes on her, _how_ could they tell her?  
  
He wanted to scream. He wanted to fall on his knees and demand to know _why_. Why _him_ , why his cousin who was so kind and joyful and _good?_ When orcs marauded the countryside and goblins invaded their mines and dragons burned dwarrow men, women and children alive, why take _him?_  
  
There were no answers. There never were when you needed them most.  
  
Bofur did not scream. He did not rail. He merely took hold of one end of the stretcher while Bombur took the other. Looking over the expanse of white and red he swallowed his tears and his rage and said, “I’ll tell them. We’ll take him home and I’ll tell them.”  
  
He could walk the path from the mines to the smithy blindfolded. For ten years, he stopped here almost every day after work, first when they struck up a friendship with the sister of the king in exile. Later when Víli got down to courting her proper. And once they were married, Bofur spent nearly as much time with them as he did with his brother and cousin, all of them together. Together, bound by Víli’s laughter and songs and Dís’s smiles. They shouldn’t have had a thing to do with one another, really, a family of miners and the children of kings, but there they were and they were happy.  
  
Every step that took him closer to the forge where an exiled king worked like a commoner was slower than the last, his feet felt as though they’d been encased in lead. Or were weighted down by rocks, the same rocks that - _No. No, please. Don’t think of it._

  
Thorin was the first one he saw and it was obvious that he knew something was terribly wrong. Bofur’s hat was in his hands, he hardly knew how it got there, he didn’t remember taking it off, but he must have for he was bending it all out of shape, twisting the flaps, knuckles bone-white, eyes red.  
  
“What is it?” he asked with the flat, dead-sounding voice of one accustomed to bad news.  
  
“There was an accident,” Bofur replied softly. He hardly recognized his own voice. “Víli...he...” He couldn’t say it. Despite what he’d told his brother, his voice stuck in his throat like a chicken bone. Bofur hadn’t known it was possible to choke on words.    
  
“No.” Thorin passed a hand over his eyes, looking at once impossibly ancient and painfully young. The denial was quietly spoken, even as Thorin let the word pass his lips, he knew it was a hopeless fancy to wish away what he knew to be true.

“Skiving off, are you? What are you doing back so - ” Dís’s sweet voice, teasingly stern cut off when she saw the blood on Bofur’s tunic and the sorrow in his face. But she did not cry. She did not scream. She did not do anything. She _knew_ , of course she knew, but when Bofur looked at her face, expecting censure or anger or sorrow, he saw nothing at all. It was as if she’d been turned to stone. “Where is he?”  
  
“Back at the house,” Bofur replied, feeling cold and stony himself. “We’d have brought him to you, but ours was closer and we didn’t want Fíli...”  
  
She shuddered, a bit and that still, marble facade cracked just a bit, but Dís took a breath and the mask was once again in place. Her brother never said a word, though the fingers of one hand were itching restlessly, as though he longed to reach out to her, but invisible bonds held him back. “No,” she shook her head. “Of course not.”  
  
“I’ll look after him,” Dwalin heard enough to realize what happened. His expression was as blank and unknowable as Dís’s. He was a warrior, Bofur recalled, as was Thorin. They’d seen more than their fair share of death. Maybe they were used to it. In a secret, shameful way, he was almost jealous of their composure. Almost. Because tears might be childish, but he could never truly envy anyone whose life traveled such a path that they could be so cool under the barrage of such pain.  
  
“Thank you,” Dís said automatically without looking back at Dwalin. She took a breath and stepped toward Bofur, holding herself so still and stiff that it seemed one wrong move might shatter her into a million pieces, like a glass bottle dropped by careless hands.  
  
It was a slow, silent procession. Word got out about the accident and there were whispered behind cupped hands, though any who got too loud as they passed suffered a glare from Thorin that made them shut their wagging gobs up tight.  
  
The anger rose up in Bofur again, for how _dare_ they? How dare they treat this awful thing like an occasion to gossip? They’d known Víli as well and surely they’d loved him. How could anyone who’d known him _not_ love him? Always laughing and joking, first to lend a hand to one in need, he’d loan you the shirt off his back in the rain, he’d...he’d volunteer to take the place of an errant worker in an unstable mineshaft so there wouldn’t be an argument over who had to do it. He was a peacemaker. He was a friend to anyone who had need of one. He was a fool.  
  
Dís hesitated on the threshold of Bofur’s bedroom, they’d laid him out in there. Bifur and Bombur were hovering anxiously in the doorway, neither looking at nor speaking a word to the young widow. Young. She was _so_ young, not even eighty-five. Víli was going to be ninety-two in winter. Going to be. Now he never would be.  
  
Thorin did raise a hand then and it hardly touched his sister’s shoulder before she shook it off. “Leave me,” she said, her voice harsh and low. “Just...leave me.”  
  
Her brother looked as if he wanted to argue, but Bifur caught his eye and shook his head. The three left the house then, silent, the heavy tread of their boots the only noise. Sounded like the drumming of a death march.  
  
Bofur turned to go as well, but Dís reached out and caught his sleeve in her grasp. “No, Bofur, you stay,” she said, looking up at him finally with luminous blue eyes. “You were his brother in every way that matters. Stay. Please.”  
  
The preparation of the body for burial was a task undertaken by the deceased’s closest family members. Sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, wives and husbands. Everything was laid out before them, the water was still steaming faintly in the bowel. Bombur and Bifur made themselves busy while Bofur delivered the sad news. He was unspeakably grateful to his brother and cousin, his hands were shaking so badly, he was sure he’d never get the fire lit.

Dís walked close to the bed and drew the sheet down in one abrupt movement, as if she feared her nerves would fail her should she attempt to do it slowly. His face was the first thing she saw, eyes closed as if in sleep - but this was not sleep. Víli was never so still as he slept, he snored, rolled and got tangled in the sheets, prompting his wife to smack him on the shoulder and tug at the blankets, complaining of the chill.  
  
 _Just cozy up by me, lass,_ he’d mutter sleepily. _Keep warm in me arms, s’me all part o’me plan._  
  
Víli was never so cold as he was now. As her eyes tracked down his body she saw the blood, she saw the place the rocks pinned him was covered by this clothes. It hardly mattered, for she saw how the air must have been squeezed from his lungs. Víli was broad shouldered and barrel-chested. Dented and flattened he was now and she brought her hand to her mouth, turning away as if she wanted to be sick.  
  
Bofur came up alongside her, his hands twisting impotently, unsure if she would welcome his touch. She’d thrown her brother off, after all and she and Thorin were very close. DísandThorin, it was. VíliandBofur it never would be again.  
  
When he heard that first soft, ragged sob, muffled behind her hands, something fragile in Bofur broke. The tears he’d been holding back fell down his cheeks in rivers and he gathered Dís up in his arms without thinking any more about it. Both her arms went around his waist and she buried her face in his shoulder, weeping raggedly into his neck. Her stomach, round with the child Víli was so looking forward to meeting soon, pressed against him and Bofur found himself holding her all the tighter. Oh, by the fires of the Creator’s celestial forges, _why?_  
  
“Shh,” Bofur hushed her wordless, one warm hand finding the skin of her neck beneath her hair. He stroked the back of her neck with his thumb trying, impossibly, to instill some comfort.  
  
Dís muttered something into his shirt, unintelligible with crying. Bofur leaned his head against the top of hers and this time managed to make out the words.  
  
“What have I done?”  
  
He did not understand. “Nothing,” he managed shakily. “Weren’t no one’s fault, lass, just...these things happen.” The words sounded hollow even as he spoke them.  
  
“All the time,” she whispered, gripping the back of his shirt so tightly in her hands, the fabric was in danger of tearing. “Always...everyone I love. They always... _leave_ me.”  
  
And Bofur heart broke again. For as many as he’d mourned, as many graves as he’d wept over and dutifully placed pebbles atop as symbols of permanence and remembrance, _(Stones do not die. I was here. I remember you. I won’t forget you. I still love you),_ she’d felt that dread and grief a hundred times over. And most of those this poor girl mourned had no burying place to visit. They were ashes scattered and carried away by the wind. Lost to her twice.  
  
“Oh, lass,” Bofur sighed, rubbing her back. What could he say? Everything seemed inadequate.  
  
Abruptly, he remembered Víli’s first words about her. There was great talk in the village that day, the survivors of Erebor had come to settle and for good, it sounded like. Being young and thoughtless,Víli, Bombur and Bofur left work early to watch the caravan arrive, somehow shocked that these high-born dwarves and dwarrowdams had so little to their names and were dressed much as they were, common miners. Bifur gave them a dressing down for that. They’d suffered, he chastised them, the words sounding more condemning being in Khuzdul. _Either treat them like neighbors or let them be._  
  
They were going to err on the side of caution and let them be, but the next day, they heard the king was setting up to work as a blacksmith and curiosity got the better of them. Taking the long way home from work they saw a handsome young dwarf with a short beard setting up a stall, working with the largest dwarrow they’d ever seen. Dwalin held their attention longer than Thorin (not that they’d known their names then), but Dís appeared, shouldering two hammers and Víli’s heart was ensnared.

_What’s all the fuss?_ Bofur asked his cousin later, after at least an hour of listening to him wax poetical over her. _They seem awfully somber._  
  
 _Aye, that’s just it. She looks so sad, but you can see she’s got a face made for smiling and laughing. I want to see if I can’t make her smile._  
  
“I thought this time, it would be different,” she continued, and Bofur wondered whether the lass would ever smile again. Then his heart clenched and he vowed to himself and the memory of his cousin - nay, his _brother_ \- that he'd do his best to see her smile and her hear laugh once more. “I thought...here, at last, is someone who won’t...and now...” She could hardly catch her breath for broken sobbing. “Everyone always leaves me. I’ve never known why. But _always_.”  
  
“Listen, now,” Bofur pulled away and looked down at her red, teary face. “I’m not going nowheres. Neither me, nor Bombur, nor Bifur, eh? We mightn’t be much, but you’re stuck with us.”  
  
“You can’t know that,” Dís shook her head. “No one can.”  
  
“But I can,” he said sincerely. “I do. No matter what, I swear, I’ll move mountains if I have to. You won’t be left by your lonesome, neither you nor them children. We were his family, now we’re yours. You got that?”  
  
Bofur reached his hands up to wipe her tears away and Dís turned her head to kiss his palm. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “Thank you for promising. Even if it’s a promise you can’t keep.”  
  
“I’ll do me damnedest,” Bofur said, more solemnly than he ever said anything before. “You’ve got me word on that, for...for his sake. And yours.”  
  
For seventy-seven years, Bofur was as good as his word. Fíli and Kíli did not call him ‘uncle,’ but Misters Bofur, Bifur and Bombur were as much a part of their lives as Thorin and Dwalin and all the members of their rag-tag family of blood, bond and choice loved those boys as devotedly as their father would have.  
  
And Dís smiled again, as Víli would have wanted her to and she laughed too, and sang. She and Bofur sang the songs he was so fond of to the lads when they were small and with them when they were older. When Thorin announced that they were going to reclaim the mountain that Bofur had only heard of in stories told ‘round the royal family’s fireside, neither he nor his kin hesitated before they pledged their loyalty and lives to the cause.  
  
“Why?” some of their neighbors asked. “That’s not your land. This isn’t your quest - mark me, their own _kin_ won’t be bothered to send them a pack mule. What’s your stake in it?”  
  
Bofur didn’t waste words on those ignorant sorts; they wouldn’t understand even if he explained until he was blue in the face. “I made a promise, once,” he'd tell them. “A promise I aim to keep.”


End file.
